The Five Books of Youth Part 7

Our broken dreams like withered leaves are swirled Where wind-dashed lanterns fail upon the roads, And all our tragic gestured episodes End in forgotten graveyards of the world.

But in those twilights where you spread your fires, Tempest and clarion are heard no more; Autumn no sorrow, spring no hope inspires, Nor can the distant closing of a door Affright the soul to dark imagining Beneath deflowered boughs where no birds sing.

Pomfret, 1919

XII

A chalice singing deep with wine, Set high among the starry groves, Welcomes every man to dine With his old familiar loves.

Sheffield, 1917

BOOK IV THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS

I

As dreamers through their dreams surmise The stealthy pa.s.sage of the night, We half-remember smoky skies And city streets and hurrying flight, Another world from this clear height Whereon our starry altars rise.

Beneath our towering waste of stone The fragile ships creep to and fro, By tempest riven and overthrown, The toys of these same tides that flow Against our pillars far below With faint, insistent monotone.

The snarling winds against our rocks Hurl breakers in a fleecy ma.s.s, Like wolves that chase stampeding flocks Over the brink of a creva.s.se, While thunders down the Alpine pa.s.s The deluge of the equinox.

Lost in that stormy atmosphere, Men chart their seas and trudge their roads; Inviolate, we scorn to hear Their shouted warning that forebodes

An end to these fair episodes Of life beneath our tranquil sky; Having sought only peace, then why Should we go down to death with fear?

Pomfret, 1920

II

The thinkers light their lamps in rows From street to street, and then The night creeps up behind, and blows Them quickly out again.

While Age limps groping toward his home, Hearing the feet of youth From dark to dark that sadly roam The suburbs of the Truth.

Paris, 1919

III

I pa.s.s my days in ghostly presences, And when the wind at night is mute, Far down the valley I can hear a flute And a strange voice, not knowing what it says.

And sometimes in the interim of days, I hear a fountain in obscure abodes, Singing with none but me to hear, the lays That would do pleasure to the ears of G.o.ds.

And faces pa.s.s, but haply they are dreams, Dreams of a mind set free that gilds The solitude with awful light and builds Temples and lovers, goblins and triremes.

Give me a chair and liberate the sun, And glancing motes to twinkle down its bars, That I may sit above oblivion, And weave myself a universe of stars.

Rome, 1918

IV

Each mote that staggers down the sun Repeats an ancient monotone That minds me of the time when I Put out the candles one by one,

And left no splendour on the face Of Him who found His resting-place Upon the Cross; and then I went Out on the desert's empty s.p.a.ce,

And heard the wind in monotone Blow grains of sand against a stone, Until I sang aloud, to break The fear of wandering alone.

There is no fear left in my soul, But when, to-day, an aureole Of sunlight gathered on your hair, And winking motes fled here and there, Like notes of music in the air, Suddenly I felt the wind Wake on the desert as I stole Out of that desecrated shrine, And then I wondered if you sinned As part of me, or if the whole Dark sacrilege were mine.

Cambridge, 1917

V

He is a priest; He feeds the dead; He sings the feast; He veils his head; The words are dread In morning mist, But the wine is red In the Eucharist.

Red as the east With sunlight spread Like a bleeding beast On a purple bed.

O Someone fled From an April tryst, Were your lips fed In the Eucharist?

I, at least, When the voice of lead Sank down and ceased, Knew the things he said.

That the G.o.d who bled, And the G.o.d we kissed, Shall never wed In the Eucharist.

Spring, give the bread We sought and missed, And wine unshed In the Eucharist.

Paris, 1919

VI

Through hissing snow, through rain, through many hundred Mays, Contorted in Promethean jest, the gargoyles sit, And watch the crowds pursue the charted ways, Whose source is birth, whose end they only know.

Charms borrowed from the loveliest of h.e.l.ls, And from the earth, a rhapsody of wit, They hear the sacramental bells Chime through the towers, and they smile.

Smile on the insects in the square below, Smile on the stars that kiss the infinite, And, when the clouds hang low, they gaily spout Grey water on the heads of the devout That gather, whispering, in the sabbath street.

O gargoyles! was the vinegar and bile So bitter? Was the eucharist so sweet?

Paris, 1919

VII

G.o.ds dine on prayer and sacred song, And go to sleep between; The G.o.ds have slumbered long; The G.o.ds are getting lean.

Sheffield, 1917